Tycoon goes public to find wife

Today, one of Norway’s wealthiest men just wants to know that Anne-Elizabeth Falkevik Hagen, the childhood sweetheart he married at age 19, is alive.

Her disappearance and suspected abduction from the couple’s home on Halloween has gripped a small, wealthy Scandinavian country with the fourth-lowest homicide rate of 36 European countries.

The family and local police investigators kept the case secret for more than a month. But with leads drying up in the discreet probe, no suspects and the risk of witnesses forgetting vital information as more days passed, the family gave police the greenlight to go public with the case on Jan. 8. The following day, word was out.

“It has been a topic for some time,” Svein Holden, the Hagen family’s lawyer, told The Associated Press. “When the police came to us saying this is the next necessary step in the investigation, the family trusted the police.”

The revelation turbo-charged the investigation. Police released security videos of men walking back and forth outside Tom Hagen’s workplace. More than 200 tips poured in. Officers and police dogs were seen scouring the grounds around the couple’s home.

A ransom for the missing woman’s release was demanded with “serious threats,” police said. They declined to give the amount, but Norwegian newspaper VG said it was for 9 million euros ($10.3 million) to be paid in Monero, a cryptocurrency considered popular among cyber-criminals.

Tom Hagen, the second-oldest in a farming family of 12 children, struck it rich in the real estate business he started in 1978. Last year, financial magazine Kapital estimated his fortune to be worth nearly 1.7 billion kroner ($200 million), wealthy but not uber-rich in Norway.